No disrespect here, but I feel this is the type of thread that is a good reason that naming someone on the forums, even when complimenting them, should not be considered a callout and against the forum rules.
And if a moderator were to come by, delete the thread, and give me some sort of ban, I'd be totally inclined to agree with you - but the "legal" system of forums is rather condensed. We've got our "laws" laid out, (the legislative side of things) but the judicial and executive sides of things are handled all at once by basically one person, and that person isn't under any obligation to enforce those laws. As such, the rules are sort of just things that when someone takes something too far, a moderator can just point at and be like "hey, you did this."
Some places handle it differently, and even here sometimes there's some heavyhandedness, but in general I think the Hawken forums have had some pretty loose rules.
...now whether that's a feature or a bug, I can't be sure.